Pacific War Project

[RockinHarry]

5 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

Swapping gear aint so bad to do. I think @Jace11 helped me with some issues and misconceptions I had.

You can easily rename and grab other animations from other titles to blanket swap out in a different title. Animation cycles I am not sure what that means. I once renamed one type position of a tank commander in 1 vehicle so I could change the vehicle. Stuart to R35 I think for Aussies near Tobruk. A mod like that might best be "scenario specific" versus for the entire mod with the same overall modtag.

There should be a cool bar somewhere where we CM modders go pull up a stool and Steve and BFC pour us free drinks all night. Damn we have all earned it.

Basically the principle of my infantry animation "mod" which is just renaming files as well. Game engine just looks at filenames, not actual content here which is useful for mentioned purposes.

Animation cycle I mean start and endpoint of it or single frames positions. Actual to be animated meshes seem defined in various the skeleton files as well as gear etc. So it´s all interconnected with lots of nested data. I.e dead soldiers is just the endpoint single frame of whole animation cycle of there´s a handfull of this particular type IIRC. Would be cool if one could grab just the last frame, load it in Blender and export it as flavor object (like dead cows and horses in farm objects).  But one can keep dreaming on... 

[kohlenklau]

@37mm

I never even downloaded it, did LLF's PTO mod have UI mods for IJA ranks and portraits and voices done? If not, I could offer to work on that aspect of the project in a year or so. Or over the next year or so as time allows, if you follow me. If somebody has ANOTHER war game and it has "harvestable" IJA voice wav files and I am told what they basically mean, I could do the renaming and copying to flesh out the designated voice pack in CMFI. I assume Italian voices would be replaced with Nihongo? Italian ranks and portraits replaced with something 1941-ish?

Working on a CM mod project has its ups and downs. But the groupies are hot and flying business class to the meetings is just awesome.

[JM Stuff]

News today !

When @37mm give me the green light with the helmet name to rename it, I can convert the dds in bmp and resized it

officers "hats" have also to come but first my wrecks  !

 

 

 

 

JM

Edited November 3, 2022 by JM Stuff

[RockinHarry]

5 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

If somebody has ANOTHER war game and it has "harvestable" IJA voice wav files and I am told what they basically mean, I could do the renaming and copying to flesh out the designated voice pack in CMFI.

I could have a look at my Steam version Red Orchestra 2 with Rising Storm and whether it has Jap voices harvestable maybe.

Edit: files is all *.upk packed file format to be opened with Unreal Development Kit only it seems. This I don´t have but can be downloaded from the net. So files (and jap voices) is there, but I can´t see detailed content.

Edited November 3, 2022 by RockinHarry

[37mm]

11 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

@37mm

I never even downloaded it, did LLF's PTO mod have UI mods for IJA ranks and portraits and voices done?

I intend to fully review the old mods & @Aquila-SmartWargames fairly recent playthrough of them... but I don't believe they got round to voices, unsure about UI.

[37mm]

8 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

 

Looks great!

[37mm]

DM if you'd like the current modset to playwith.

[LongLeftFlank]

12 hours ago, 37mm said:

I intend to fully review the old mods & @Aquila-SmartWargames fairly recent playthrough of them... but I don't believe they got round to voices, unsure about UI.

Please use the Editor to set Ground conditions to WET before playing Makin. That should suitably nobble the tanks.

Aquila just cut them loose and let them run riot.  That is nothing like what happened, although historically one of the (halftracks modded as) LVTs lost its brakes and careened through the coconut groves to end up stranded on the opposite beach.

[JM Stuff]

12 hours ago, 37mm said:

DM if you'd like the current modset to playwith.

Is this sentence or question  adressed to me because DM, mean perhaps JM, me I dont understand ? 

If yes I would like to know which files in the game that you want use for the Japanese soldiers helmets i.e. 

smod_american_helmet-soldier, smod_british_helmet-soldier-mk2... that I can working on the models in textures and resized it correctly, for the time this is a huge helmet without correct size to the game but also what do you want to use as skeletons (mds).

JM 

Edited November 4, 2022 by JM Stuff

[Kuli]

Biggest Challenge would probably be the Japanese uniforms themselves, a suitable model needs to be found, A suitable timeframe would probably be 1943-45 in my opinion. Vehicles are an even bigger hassle. I also think its non essential given the state of the IJA that late in the war. Maybe I should start working on scenarios in the meantime, Okinawa, Peleliu, etc. USMC uniforms might not be as hard to cook up.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Kuli

[Kuli]

I also checked out the LLF pacific mod modified by SWG and it seems most stuff is already there, just needs to be modified to fit into CMFI

[RockinHarry]

5 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Please use the Editor to set Ground conditions to WET before playing Makin. That should suitably nobble the tanks.

Aquila just cut them loose and let them run riot.  That is nothing like what happened, although historically one of the (halftracks modded as) LVTs lost its brakes and careened through the coconut groves to end up stranded on the opposite beach.

One can also bits of fake mod terrain types to look different from normal and use these instead. I.e I made my steep slopes terrain all "marsh", but looks is those of my own choice (something similar to "ground forest" in my case). Same for doodads if there´s any associated with a terrain type. My "marsh-slopes" terrain is NOGO for vehicles and rather hard going for infantry. Setting ground type to all "muddy" adds another difficulty to vehicles at least.

[37mm]

On 11/2/2022 at 8:42 PM, Lucky_Strike said:

Okay @37mm If you can send me a picture, or two or three, of the type of thing you have in mind, happy to oblige.

As an aside, FI offers a great many possibilities because of the large array of variations in climate, geography, season and conditions that are covered. For basic foliage alone you have the possibility of 3 bushes, grapevine, 6 tree types, low bocage and hedges, with extras depending on other factors. I would imagine that you won't have much need for low bocage in it's current form, and to this end I have been proposing, elsewhere, to turn low bocage into a kind of thicket cum bigger brush for use in forests, woods etc. This might be something that you could also use - as a landscape feature it would provide better concealment and cover than stuff like brush, and could really add to your environment - thinking dense jungles and forests. I'm going to be making these kinds of things anyway so porting them to the Pacific theatre would be a case of some remodelling and extra foliage textures - would this be of interest to you?

I once wasted a month in blender trying to get a palm tree like this into SF2...

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-river-scene-many-palm-trees-southern-vietnam-dong-thap-image69445091

Replacing one of the huge Pine trees with something like a tall Dipterocarp...

https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2017/12/5/dipterocarps

Also a teak tree would be cool...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teak

 

We replaced hedges with lowbocage in H&E as we didn't need the straight look of hedges & we ocassionally used them to thicken up jungles.

I like your thicket idea though, for CMFI, perhaps the grapevine .mdr's would be a better choice to play around with? Infantry & vehicle movement is severely hampered by them already.

[37mm]

On 11/4/2022 at 5:57 PM, RockinHarry said:

One can also bits of fake mod terrain types to look different from normal and use these instead. I.e I made my steep slopes terrain all "marsh", but looks is those of my own choice (something similar to "ground forest" in my case). Same for doodads if there´s any associated with a terrain type. My "marsh-slopes" terrain is NOGO for vehicles and rather hard going for infantry. Setting ground type to all "muddy" adds another difficulty to vehicles at least.

For H&E marsh was used to create rice paddies... although last year I did find a (time consuming) way of making actually flooded with water fields.

[37mm]

On 11/4/2022 at 1:27 PM, Kuli said:

Biggest Challenge would probably be the Japanese uniforms themselves, a suitable model needs to be found, A suitable timeframe would probably be 1943-45 in my opinion. Vehicles are an even bigger hassle. I also think its non essential given the state of the IJA that late in the war. Maybe I should start working on scenarios in the meantime, Okinawa, Peleliu, etc. USMC uniforms might not be as hard to cook up.

Content creation could indeed start occuring earlier, the mods will come with time.

The IJA would probably be fine making do with the various Italian tanks & tankettes, although if we're proposing to also give them Allied access to Brens they would get that factions vehicles too.

I think the Americans would have to use British Crocodiles for flamethrower tanks (possibly model swapped with a tag).

You can get low quality American units in FI with springfields rather than garands so even 1942 scenarios are not a great stretch.

[37mm]

On 11/4/2022 at 1:03 PM, JM Stuff said:

Is this sentence or question  adressed to me because DM, mean perhaps JM, me I dont understand ? 

If yes I would like to know which files in the game that you want use for the Japanese soldiers helmets i.e. 

smod_american_helmet-soldier, smod_british_helmet-soldier-mk2... that I can working on the models in textures and resized it correctly, for the time this is a huge helmet without correct size to the game but also what do you want to use as skeletons (mds).

JM 

DM means Direct Message.

I believe its smod_italian_helmet-soldier.mdr that's the key mdr... but there's a lot of Italian helmet models & textures (even an animation file) in the brz's.

[JM Stuff]

45 minutes ago, 37mm said:

DM means Direct Message.

I believe its smod_italian_helmet-soldier.mdr that's the key mdr... but there's a lot of Italian helmet models & textures (even an animation file) in the brz's.

Ok ☺ sorry to don't understand DM.

So I will check  Italians helmets and let's you know.

JM

[Kuli]

if you can send me the terrain mod when its done i can try my hand at some scenarios @37mm

Edited November 6, 2022 by Kuli

[RockinHarry]

3 hours ago, 37mm said:

For H&E marsh was used to create rice paddies... although last year I did find a (time consuming) way of making actually flooded with water fields.

Another creative use of terrain type that´s not needed elsewhere on a map. Guess you mean something with shallow fords maybe?

[Lucky_Strike]

7 hours ago, 37mm said:

I once wasted a month in blender trying to get a palm tree like this into SF2...

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-river-scene-many-palm-trees-southern-vietnam-dong-thap-image69445091

Replacing one of the huge Pine trees with something like a tall Dipterocarp...

https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2017/12/5/dipterocarps

Also a teak tree would be cool...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teak.

I think they should all be doable to an extent. We may have to forego having the large palm tree fronds waving in the wind, but otherwise I don't think there would be any major issues. SF2 has a couple of unique tree types in terms of models, very different from the rest of the games. I don't know why they are only implemented there. Anyway since we are essentially in Italy in the Far East that's irrelevant.

7 hours ago, 37mm said:

We replaced hedges with lowbocage in H&E as we didn't need the straight look of hedges & we ocassionally used them to thicken up jungles.

I like your thicket idea though, for CMFI, perhaps the grapevine .mdr's would be a better choice to play around with? Infantry & vehicle movement is severely hampered by them already.

Grapevines are something I haven't really looked at. They are very odd graphics/models but I suspect quite simple at heart, probably similar to bocage. They always associate with rocky ground I think, which probably adds to the hampering movement effect. I just had a thought about them, I wonder if they could be made to look like tea plantations ... is that a worthwhile use of time? Are there many tea plantations in the regions you're looking at? Either way we can surely come up with some creative uses for hedges, bocage and grapevines.

[37mm]

On 11/6/2022 at 2:13 PM, RockinHarry said:

Another creative use of terrain type that´s not needed elsewhere on a map. Guess you mean something with shallow fords maybe?

Yeah we figured out fairly early on that you could flood the CMSF trench terrain with water (indeed we initially thought we might have discovered a bug) however it wasn't until I started playing around with some of @dragonwynn's Heart of Darkness maps that I realized just how much terrain could be flooded.

Here you can see the new style rice paddies (which will feature in the next version of H&E)... they are shallow ford tiles set to, say height 6, whilst the field tiles around them are set to height 5.

The flooding only reaches one action square so you have to create a gridwork of shallow ford squares & surrounding fields.

[37mm]

On 11/6/2022 at 11:49 AM, Kuli said:

if you can send me the terrain mod when its done i can try my hand at some scenarios @37mm

I'll tidy up the modpack & post it soon.

[37mm]

On 11/6/2022 at 5:56 PM, Lucky_Strike said:

 I just had a thought about them, I wonder if they could be made to look like tea plantations ... is that a worthwhile use of time? Are there many tea plantations in the regions you're looking at? Either way we can surely come up with some creative uses for hedges, bocage and grapevines.

I can't recall tea plantations in my vague memories of reading about the fighting in Burma and it seems unlikely to me that there were many tea plantations on Pacific Islands.

To be honest, we need some Asian-Pacific War grogs really.

Funny aside, grape plantations are suprisingly common in modern Vietnam... French influence and all.

[37mm]

On 11/4/2022 at 1:38 PM, Kuli said:

I also checked out the LLF pacific mod modified by SWG and it seems most stuff is already there, just needs to be modified to fit into CMFI

You're right! There's WAY more in there than I realized including some voices.

It looks like a combination of both Germans & standard Brits (not Polish Airborne) were used as Japanese.

I'll transfer what I can to the current CMFI modset... might even have a go at converting those scenarios.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, 37mm said:

I can't recall tea plantations in my vague memories of reading about the fighting in Burma and it seems unlikely to me that there were many tea plantations on Pacific Islands.

To be honest, we need some Asian-Pacific War grogs really.

Funny aside, grape plantations are suprisingly common in modern Vietnam... French influence and all.

Ii did have a quick Google about to see whether tea is grown much in SE Asia and Pacific Rim. Java, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Burma seemed to be the biggest producers outside of India China and Sri Lanka.

I did wonder if grapes were grown much in any of the affected countries. I'd imagine the climate is not great for viniculture.

Rubber plantations would be good. I'll have to keep looking for another use of the grapevines.